These are ripple days begun .

March 2. 

Notice the brightness of a row of osiers this morning. This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations, is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season. This is one compensation for having them lopped so often along the causeways, that it is only these new and vigorous growths which shine thus. 

Frequently within ten days it has been uncomfortable walking in a greatcoat. 

2 P. M. — Thermometer 50°. To Witherell Glade via Clamshell; thence to Hubbard’s Close. 

Thinking to look at the cabbage as I pass under Clamshell, I find it very inconspicuous. Most would have said that there was none there. The few tallest and slenderest but tender ones were frost-bitten and far from blooming, but I found three or four more, broad and stout, – a hardy mahogany-colored one, but very low, half covered with the withered sedge, which it lifted up with it, and not apparently open. Putting my finger into one, the broadest and lowest, which opened about half an inch and stood with its back to the west (while they are all sheltered by the hill on the north), I was surprised when I drew it forth to see it covered with pollen. It was fairly in bloom, and probably yesterday too. Evidently some buds are further advanced than others even when the winter comes, and then these are further expanded and matured in advance of the others in the very warm days in the winter. No doubt it may have bloomed in some places in this neighborhood in the last day or two of February this year. Unusually warm weather in February, with bare ground where they grow, may cause them to bloom before February is over. Most would not have detected any change in it since the fall.

The grass has evidently sprung and grown a little, a very little, of late, say the very last of February, in warm wet places at the south base of hills, like this. It has a healthy but dark-green look. The (apparently) Epilobium coloratum has conspicuous green radical leaves there. 

I see several minute glaucous sort of grasshoppers-skipping over the grass and water. 

Men shooting musquash these days. 

All the grass-stubble in fields not mown is conspicuous pointed eastward, and reflects the light from a thousand parallel lances. Probably blown thus by the prevailing winds through the winter. 

Now and for some days look for arrowheads where it is not too soft. 

There is a strong westerly wind to-day, though warm, and we sit under Dennis’s Lupine Promontory, to observe the water. 

The great phenomenon these days is the sparkling blue water, — a richer blue than the sky ever is. The flooded meadows are ripple lakes on a large scale. 

The landscape, though no growth is visible in it, is bright and springlike. There is the tawny earth (almost completely bare) of different shades, lighter or darker, the light very light in this air, more so than the surface of the earth ever is (i. e. without snow), bleached as it were; and, in the hollows of it, set round by the tawny hills and banks, is this copious living and sparkling blue water of various shades. 

It is more dashing, rippling, sparkling, living, this windy but clear day; never smooth, but ever varying in its degree of motion and depth of blue as the wind is more or less strong, rising and falling. All along the shore next us is a strip a few feet wide of very light and smooth sky-blue, for so much is sheltered even by the lowest shore, but the rest is all more or less agitated and dark-blue. In it are, floating or stationary, here and there, cakes of white ice, the least looking like ducks, and large patches of water have a dirty-white or even tawny look, where the ice still lies on the bottom of the meadow. Thus even the meadow flood is parded, and of various patches of color. 

Ever and anon the wind seems to drop down from over the hill in strong puffs, and then spread and diffuse itself in dark fan shaped figures over the surface of the water. It is glorious to see how it sports on the watery surface. You see a hundred such nimble-footed puffs drop and spread on all sides at once, and dash off, sweeping the surface of the water for forty rods in [ a ] few seconds, as if so many invisible spirits were playing tag there. It even suggests some fine dust swept along just above the surface, and reminds me of snow blowing over ice and vapor curling along a roof,-meandering like that, often. Like hair, like the crown of the head, curling various ways. The before dark blue is now diversified with much darker or blackish patches with a suggestion of red,-purplish even. 

Then the wind blows with stronger gust down the Nut Meadow valley on our right, and I am surlprised to see that the billows which it makes are concentric curves apparently reaching round from shore to shore of this broad bay, forty rods wide or more :-

This is conspicuously the form of them. For which two things may account, — the greater force of the wind in the middle and the friction of the shores. And when it blows hardest, each successive billow (four or five feet apart or more) is crowned with yellowish or dirty white foam. 

The wind blows around each side of the hill, the opposite currents meeting perchance, or it falls over the hill. So you have a field of ever-varying color,-dark blue, blackish, yellowish, light blue, and smooth sky-blue, and purplish, and yellowish foam, all at once. 

Sometimes the wind visibly catches up the surface and blows it along and about in spray four or five feet high. Now and then, when the gust increases, there comes a top of fly-away grass from over the hill, goes dancing over the waves, and soon is lost. The requisites are high water mostly clear of ice, ground bare and sufficiently dry, weather warm enough, and wind strong and gusty; then you may sit or stand on a hill and watch this play of the wind with the water. 

I know of no checker-board more interesting to watch. The wind, the gusts, comb the hair of the water nymphs. You never tíre of seeing it drop, spread, and sweep over the yielding and sensitive surface. The water is so full of life, now rising into higher billows which would make your mast crack if you had any, now subsiding into lesser, dashing against and wearing away the still anchored ice, setting many small cakes adrift. How they entertain us with ever-changing scenes, in the sky above or on the earth below ! If the plowman lean on his plow-handle and look up or down, there is danger that he will forget his labor on that day. 

These are ripple days begun, — not yet in woodland pools, where is ice yet. 

I see a row of white pines, too, waving and reflecting their silvery light.

The red maple sap flows freely, and probably has for several days. 

I begin to notice the reddish stems of moss on low ground, not bright yet. 

C. has seen good bæomyces (?) lately. There is none however at Bæomyces Bank. 

In Hosmer’s ditches in the moraine meadow, the grass just peeps above the surface, apparently begun to grow a little. 

I see on [sic] a small round last year’s turtle with a yellowish spot on each scale and a yellow-pink breast centred with black. 

Also see a yellow-spot turtle there. 

Some of those tufts of andropogon radical leaves make excellent seats now when the earth is moist.

We see one or two gnats in the air. 

See thirty or more crows come flying in the usual irregular zigzag manner in the strong wind, from over M. Miles’s, going northeast, — the first migration of them, — without cawing.

See a little conferva in ditches.

Looking up a narrow ditch in a meadow, I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow, -- and then alight far off on a rock. Ed. Hoar says he heard one February 27th. 

Hayden thinks he has seen bluebirds for a fortnight!! Say that he has possibly for a week (?), and that will agree with Wheeler. Ed. Hoar says he heard one February 27th. 

At Brister Spring, and especially below, at the cowslip, the dense bedded green moss is very fresh and handsome, and the cowslip leaves, though unfolded, rise to the surface. 

See a little frog in one of the spring-holes. 

See a hen-hawk. 

Two or three tufts of carex have shot up in Hosmer’s cold spring ditch and been frost-bitten. 

Ed. Hoar says he heard a phebe February 27th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 2, 1860

Notice the brightness of a row of osiers this morning. This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations, is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season.  See February 24, 1855 ("The brightening of the willows or of osiers, —that is a season in the spring,. . ., I remember it as a prominent phenomenon affecting the face of Nature, a gladdening of her face. You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them"); March 20, 1859 (" This is, methinks, the brightest object in the landscape these days. Nothing so betrays the spring sun. I am aware that the sun has come out of a cloud first by seeing it lighting up the osiers. Such a willow-row, cut off within a year or two, might be called a heliometer, or measure of the sun's brightness.")

Evidently some buds are further advanced than others even when the winter comes, and then these are further expanded and matured in advance of the others in the very warm days in the winter. See March 2, 1859  ("Under the alders at Well Meadow I see a few skunk- cabbage spathes fairly open on the side, and these may bloom after a day or two of pleasant weather."); see also  February 27, 1860 (" I noticed yesterday that the skunk-cabbage had not started yet at Well Meadow, and had been considerably frost-bitten. "); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage

These are ripple days begun. See March 9, 1860 (“March began warm, and I admired the ripples made by the gusts on the dark-blue meadow flood, and the light-tawny color of the earth, and was on the alert to hear the first birds.”); April 9, 1859 ("Watching the ripples fall and dash across the surface of low-lying and small woodland lakes is one of the amusements of these windy March and April days.”)

See thirty or more crows come flying in the usual irregular zigzag manner in the strong wind, from over M. Miles’s, going northeast, — the first migration of them, — without cawing. See March 5, 1854 ("See crows, as I think, migrating northeasterly. They come in loose, straggling flocks, about twenty to each, commonly silent, a quarter to a half a mile apart, till four flocks have passed, perhaps more. "); March 7, 1855 (". Did I not see crows flying northeasterly yesterday toward night?"); March 5, 1859 (" I see a crow going north or northeast, high over Fair Haven Hill, and, two or three minutes after, two more, and so many more at intervals of a few minutes. This is apparently their spring movement. ")

The red maple sap flows freely, and probably has for several days. See February 21, 1857 ("Am surprised to see this afternoon a boy collecting red maple sap from some trees behind George Hubbard's. It runs freely. The earliest sap I made to flow last year was March 14th "); March 3, 1857 ("The red maple sap, which I first noticed the 21st of February, is now frozen up in the auger-holes ."); March 4, 1852 (I see where a maple has been wounded the sap is flowing out. Now, then, is the time to make sugar."); March 7, 1855 ("To-day, as also three or four days ago, I saw a clear drop of maple sap on a broken red maple twig, which tasted very sweet.")

Also see a yellow-spot turtle there. See March 26, 1860 ("The yellow-spotted tortoise may be seen February 23, as in '57, or not till March 28, as in '55, — thirty-three days."); February 23, 1857 ("What mean these turtles, these coins of the muddy mint issued in early spring? The bright spots on their backs are vain unless I behold them. The spots seem brighter than ever when first beheld in the spring, as does the bark of the willow. I have seen signs of the spring. I have seen a frog swiftly sinking in a pool, or where he dimpled the surface as he leapt in. I have seen the brilliant spotted tortoises stirring at the bottom of ditches. I have seen the clear sap trickling from the red maple. ")


See a little conferva in ditches. See January 29, 1858 ("In the ditches on Holbrook's meadow near Copan, I see a Rana palustris swimming, and much conferva greening all the water. Even this green is exhilarating, like a spring in winter. I am affected by the sight even of a mass of conferva in a ditch")

I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow. See note to February 24, 1857 ("I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside. ")


I begin to notice the reddish stems of moss on low ground, not bright yet. At Brister Spring the dense bedded green moss is very fresh and handsome. See March 7 , 1855 ("At Brister’s Spring there are beautiful dense green beds of moss, which apparently has just risen above the surface of the water, tender and compact."); April 2, 1853 (" See the fine moss in the pastures with beautiful red stems even crimsoning the ground. This is its season.")

See a hen-hawk.  See; March 2, 1855 ("Hear two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind through a crevice in the sky.”);  March 2, 1856 ("I can hardly believe that hen-hawks may be beginning to build their nests now. ")